


It's That Time Of Year

by Sword_Kallya



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Gen, Mentions of assassination, Mentions of poisioning, One of Grandmama's, Valois Family Christmas Party, copious amounts of sarcasm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 10:29:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8976073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sword_Kallya/pseuds/Sword_Kallya
Summary: Spark Exchange 2016 gift for request: sturmvariouses (pre-canon) at one of Grandmama's parties. Banter if possible.
Violetta has had a really long day. Zise is having the night of her life. Rainhardt should not have had to deal with this.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greyskiesallclear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyskiesallclear/gifts).



> Zise is actually 紫色, Mandarin Chinese for purple. Ianthe is a Greek name meaning violet flower. Fyrian is derived from Porphyrian, another Greek name, this time a kind of purple rock. Yolanda means violet.

Violetta yawned, tucked into a corner high above the party. Various family members milled about on the ballroom floor; Tarvek would know who they all were, and would probably know their relation to him. Violetta could care less.

She did, unfortunately, care about the idiot behind her. tucked up against the eaves, snoring slightly, with red hair flopping down over ridiculously large square glasses and drunk on all of  _two_ glasses of wine. Two! There hadn't even been anything besides wine in those glasses; she'd checked each of them three times,  _and_ the decanter! She hadn't been caught at it either, not really, even if Ianthe had scoffed at her about it. And maybe Fyrian had bumped into her while doing it, even if she wasn't supposed to be seen... Anyway! There hadn't been anything but alcohol in those drinks, she was sure.

Tarvek snorted, shifting in his sleep. Violetta grabbed his arm, afraid that he would fall. Suddenly the ballroom seemed  _very_ far below them.

"You might want to tie him in," declared a voice from the next beam over. Violetta whirled up to face the newcomer, and paled.

Madame Zise, the stealth master for almost all young Smoke Knights, crouched lightly on carved wood. Violetta gulped, then mentally prayed that the sound wasn't as loud as it had seemed to her. "I... Madame I..."

"Oh, hush." The older woman waved off her attempts at polite conversation with the air of a queen speaking to a beggar child. Her gaze returned to Tarvek. "How much wine did he have?"

"Only two glasses, Madame, and I checked to make sure that there was nothing in them. I'm  _nearly_ sure there wasn't."

"Tch. Clara was never such a lightweight." A dark braid that glinted just slightly with smoked steel peeked out from under her headwrap as Zise turned to regard the party below. "I doubt anyone spiked his drinks. Von Blitzengaard is the only one who would really want to, and his sister has had him on a tight leash all night."

Violetta breathed a sigh of relief she hoped wasn't audible. "Thank you, madame."

* * *

"You'd best get your boy out of here, or at least tie him down soon. They're about to start." Violetta winced, as Zise had known she would. None of the children knew what the adults would be starting, but the blast marks on the walls the morning after spoke for themselves.

As Violetta collected her sleeping charge, Zise faded expertly into the shadows of the rafters and clambered soundlessly down to where her own charge sat enthroned, presiding over the party in place of her incompetent husband. Obsidian joined her there back from ushering the von Blitzengaard children out of the room.

Adalie Valois was quickly approaching sixty, not that it had slowed her down at all. At fifteen, she had developed the control techniques that sparks throughout the family used to keep ahold of their... tendencies. At twenty-five, she had developed antidotes for every poison commonly used by Smoke Knights, and probably used the research to craft a few poisons of her own. At forty, she had essentially taken over as the head of the family, as her husband went senile. Rumor had it that she had "helped" him with that. Zise privately thought that it wasn't out of the question.

Adalie met Obsidian's eyes, then Zise's. Both nodded, indicating that they had completed their tasks. 

Princess Adalie Valois, great-granddaughter of Andronicus Valois himself, rose from her seat at the head table and cleared her throat.

The room went silent. 

"Lords and ladies, nieces and nephews, kin of all kinds...

"Let us begin!"

* * *

Rainhardt Burgstaller, minor Valois cousin and newly come of age, clutched his short sword and ducked into a nook off of one of the servants' halls, sweating profusely. He'd heard stories about Grandmere's parties of course, who hadn't? With all the stories floating around he hadn't known what to expect.

Whatever he had expected, a mock invasion  _was not it._

The sounds of minor explosions echoed through the halls. Rainhardt gripped his blade harder, mentally vowing to bring far heavier firepower to the next party. 

Elrica, a distant cousin a few years older than him, staggered over to his hiding spot - and past, as she clumsily dodged some kind of death ray. 

Rainhardt shoved himself farther back into his crevice, mentally vowing to bring  _ranged_ weapons next time.

* * *

Anevka darted into the shadow of a curving stair as footsteps sounded further down the hall. Silently, she pulled her hairpin out of her hair. She'd tipped it with sedatives today - Grandmere frowned rather harshly on actually  _killing_ family members during these parties, but anything less was fair game. 

However, everyone knew that if you could cause something debilitating to happen to a rival during the party, an assassination attempt taking advantage of that was was completely fair game.

The cousin sprinting down the hall was an idiot. Anevka seriously debated clotheslining them. It would serve them right.

Shoving the impulse aside, she prepared to throw her pin - 

* * *

Zise saw the Sturmvoraus girl reach out to attack the approaching Obsidian and let her own blowdart fly. The girl tumbled to the floor, completely still.

"One out of bed, huh?" quipped Obsidian, softening his tread from 'idiot' to 'competent' now that he wasn't playing bait. "Herself won't be happy."

"Which is why  _Yolanda,_ " a young knight slunk out of the shadows, hanging her head, "will be getting her back  _in_ bed before anyone else finds out. Won't she."

The child collected her charge and made good her escape before her teachers could say any more. "Nice technique," Obsidian commented as her purple cloak disappeared into a servant's passage about thirty feet up.

"I'll be certain to mention it to her next time I see her," Zise retorted dryly. "Shall we?"

"Is that the last one out of bed?"

"How should I know? You were the one that was supposed to check."

A moment of silence passed as Obsidian ran through a mental index of party guests under the age of 21. "Seems so."

"The She wants us to clear a way for her to get to the carriage house. She wants to take  _that_ sled out for a whirl." Zise indulged herself in a very unprofessional taste of schadenfraude as her reluctant partner clamped his lips down on an emphatic curse. He  _hated_ that sled.

Zise, on the other hand, was a true Valois daughter, if one born on the wrong side of the sheets. The sled matched her aesthetic  _perfectly,_ down to the lasers. Obsidian just had no sense of  _style._

* * *

Rainhardt waited a beat for the small knot of cousins to pass his hiding spot, then bolted for the door to the courtyard. Given the wintry weather, most of the partygoers would be staying inside. If he could get close to the palace wall he would be safer. Probably. Mostly.

He made his way along the side of the outbuildings, with more haste than was likely necessary. Shouts and explosions echoed from the other side of the castle, and he breathed a quiet sigh of relief. That ought to get everyone's attention away from him, though a niggling sense of self-preservation in the back of his mind had him glancing over his shoulder as he rose from a crouch.

Movement caught his eye from one of the carriage houses, and he snapped on the defensive, but not quickly enough. He actually fainted as a sled-mounted death ray passed close enough to his head to ruffle his hair.

* * *

"Ten points to me!" Zise smirked. Obsidian swore and dove for the rear guns.

 

 

 

 


End file.
